Important Notice: Theme 3 from Leg 2, Social Media Segmentation is deferred to Leg 4.

eleonoraescalantestrategy 21 Nov 2017 Leave a Comment

Hi to all of you today.

Another day and the 7 teams are racing towards Cape Town. “The second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race might be entering its final few days but the final positions are far from decided”. The teams are expected to arrive this weekend. Mapfre team is leading the fleet, for the time being. But “the final positions are far from decided”.

I will sail the rest of Leg 2 with an unprecedented strategic new move. The third theme for Leg 2 was added at last minute as a bonus material when I was writing the outline for Leg 2. Believe me, I was not planning to develop anything about social media, but I thought of adding it. Now, I have decided to change things a little bit. As a result, the Theme 3, Social Media Networks Segmentation will be deferred to Leg 4 (from Melbourne to Hong Kong). Why? Because this is a critical new topic. It requires extensive and responsible analysis from my side. I would like to have more time to develop the outline proposed initially. And, I would like to dig the social media topics from a critical perspective.

The social media industry (can we talk about this industry now?) is too new for all of us (just around 10 years I opened my facebook account). Look, digital technologies have started to be analyzed only 2 or 3 years ago!!! by academics and by practitioners. Even for my professors and partners from consulting companies such as BAIN, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group or Price Waterhouse Coopers, this is new material!!!. They have started to write about these topics maybe 2 or 3 years ago; this social media industry is giving us a shake. Please remember one thing is social media, and another one is digital technology. Social media is part of Digital Technologies as much as automation, big data, and artificial intelligence. Do not confuse digital technologies with social media. Do not confuse them.

Different countries in the world have different approaches to digital technologies. An example of how new is this theme in the world is the Digital Evolution Index from Harvard Business Review Specialists. It was launched just 2 years ago, in 2015, to trace the emergence of the countries into a “digital planet”. “The digital evolution index shows us how physical interactions — in communications, social and political exchange, commerce, media, and entertainment — are being displaced by digitally mediated ones”.

We can observe how was the first digital evolution index map released in the year 2015:

digital readiness evolution 2013.png

And how the digital evolution index, is ♣now♣ in the year 2017:

It is too soon to give advice without thinking in the consequences. I have been thinking about this for several years. Any new way of doing things has benefits and wonderful opportunities but also has negative human consequences and costs. There are audacious countries and people who are using digital technologies and social media without thinking in the future ahead and recommending it insanely. And there are other European mature countries which have diminished the rate of change in digital evolution (are going backward). Compare the two graphs, please. As a result, I am cautious. Wise practitioners are still guessing where are we going with all these social media tools and the rest of digital technology categories. I would like to give my own personal recommendations and provoke some “critical thinking” too. In consequence, I prefer to defer the theme to Leg 4, than to just pass it by in three days faster. OK.

Outline theme 3 deferred.jpg Thank you for your comprehension. My next post is about competitive intelligence or competitor analysis. It is already ready and I will upload it in a moment.